Ray Kurzweil and David Chalmers to Headline Singularity Summit 2009 in New York

Share Article

The Singularity Institute will be holding the fourth annual Singularity Summit in New York in October, featuring talks by Ray Kurzweil, David Chalmers, and Peter Thiel.

As we get closer to the Singularity, each year's conference is better than the last.

New York, NY (PRWEB)July 17, 2009

The fourth annual Singularity Summit, a conference devoted to the better understanding of increasing intelligence and accelerating change, will be held in New York on October 3-4 in Kaufmann Hall at the historic 92nd St Y. The Summit brings together a visionary community to further dialogue and action on complex, long-term issues that are transforming the world.

Participants will hear talks from cutting-edge researchers and network with strategic business leaders. The world's most eminent experts on forecasting, venture capital, emerging technologies, consciousness and life extension will present their unique perspectives on the future and how to get there. "The Singularity Summit is the premier conference on the Singularity," says Ray Kurzweil, inventor of the CCD flatbed scanner and author of The Singularity is Near. "As we get closer to the Singularity, each year's conference is better than the last."

The Singularity Summit has previously been held in the San Francisco Bay Area, where it has been featured in numerous publications including the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. It is hosted by the Singularity Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit devoted to studying the benefits and risks of advanced technologies.

Select Speakers

Ray Kurzweil is the author of The Singularity is Near (2005) and co-founder of Singularity University, which is backed by Google and NASA. At the Singularity Summit, he will present his theories on accelerating technological change and the future of humanity.

Dr. David Chalmers, director of the Centre for Consciousness at Australian National University and one of the world's foremost philosophers, will discuss mind uploading -- the possibility of transferring human consciousness onto a computer network.

Dr. Ed Boyden is a joint professor of Biological Engineering and of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. Discover Magazine named him one of the 20 best brains under 40.

Peter Thiel is the president of Clarium, seed investor in Facebook, managing partner of Founders Fund, and co-founder of PayPal.

Dr. Aubrey de Grey is a biogerontologist and Director of Research at the SENS Foundation, which seeks to extend the human lifespan. He will present on the ethics of this proposition.

Dr. Philip Tetlock is Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Expert Political Judgement: How Good Is It?

Dr. Jürgen Schmidhuber is co-director of the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Lugano, Switzerland. He will discuss the mathematical essence of beauty and creativity.

Dr. Gary Marcus is director of the NYU Infant Language Learning Center, and professor of psychology at New York University and author of the book Kludge.